A Note From the L.A. Teen Therapist

I’ve witnessed many bright college students, who successfully completed AP courses and got accepted to top name schools, failing out of their first year. – Sandra

These young people are becoming burnt-out, over-stimulated by the bombardment of information and constant connection available through technology. Add to this the concerted effort they just put in to create the perfect college application, SAT scores, essays and grades, and you have a recipe for them shutting down, or tipping over, as they enter –or leave college. 

Unfortunately, due to over-scheduling, they were never able to truly examine what wasn’t working in their lives, and cultivate the social and emotional coping-skills necessary to thrive. Pushing to always “do” more, they lost their ability to self-reflect along the way. So they turned to distractions from emotional discomfort, like drugs, video-games, binge-watching Netflix, and casual sex, in order to distract themselves from their stress. These ineffective coping skills are then carried into their college classwork, relationships, and jobs. Not having learned to tolerate the boredom of a repetitious task, they also haven’t cultivated the patience to wait for a desired outcome. They also don’t yet know how to communicate their wants and needs in a graceful manner, so they blow-up relationships with bosses, coworkers and friends, or worse, they suffer in silence.